We’ve been in Early Access for just a little more than one year now. To all who've played, joined our community, or given feedback: a heartfelt thank you from the Lavapotion dev team! Initially, we aimed for a full release this quarter, but after careful thought, we've decided to move it forward. Please allow us to clarify the decision.
Nearly half a million people have wishlisted our game, which is to be honest both unexpected and humbling. The Adventure Strategy genre isn't the largest anymore, yet you've demonstrated that the demand endures. But to put it simply: if the game isn't 1.0-ready, we have to acknowledge it and persevere through ongoing development. So let's check out the new roadmap, upcoming changes and the reasons for them.
A version with better resolution, or simple text format, can be found on our webpage!
The AI First of all, we want to acknowledge that we are not satisfied with the current state of the AI for a full release. We have a solid development plan for it and we know what to do, it just has taken longer than we had planned. It takes a lot of time to get all the basic systems working and we are close to that point right now. With nine out of ten play sessions being single player it is obvious that the AI is of utmost importance.
The new region system features natural borders and minimizes changes to it over time, in order to better guide the AI in navigating and expanding across the map.
Randomly generated maps Around a fourth of all game sessions are played on random maps. We want to make sure that the experience is varied, exciting and perfect each time. We are currently collecting feedback regarding the random maps in order to refine and improve the code and design elements behind it all. For the game to stay relevant long term it is important that the randomly generated maps feels and plays just right.
Iteration, testing and improvements, that’s the recipe for success they say! So, we’ll iterate this some more and then improve it with the help of your feedback.
New user experience Since we released into Early Access, we have created a lot of new features. We need to make sure that new players get to try out these new features and get the best possible experience when trying the game for the first time. This means taking a look in the rearview mirror and coming back to things (like campaign maps) that were designed years ago and making sure that they use all the new cool stuff. Similarly the UI needs to be adapted in order to best present all the new features, as well as highlighting the wonderfully handcrafted maps that you've created.
In March 2017 the game looked like this. Sometimes it is good to take a step back and remind ourselves just how far we have come…
Steam Deck release This one might come a bit out of the blue, but a lot of you guys want to play on your Steam Deck. Let me be clear that the addition of Steam Deck support has not impacted the decision to delay the release. It is an added bonus, rather than an obstacle in our development process. It is a lot of work, mainly because our UI needs a lot of re-scaling in order to work well on smaller screens. Fortunately we are helped by a great studio called Bitwave, so the time required on Lavapotions end is minimal. Bitwave are currently working with us to ensure that playing on the Steam Deck will feel like a native experience, not a sloppy port. The added benefit is that this will also enable us to have full gamepad support.
The game is running well on the Steam Deck, but UI elements and fonts still needs to be scaled up.
To sum it up In the words of Shigeru Miyamoto: a delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad. We are here for the long haul and we want to make this the best game it can be. The best days are still ahead of us and you can expect more exciting news in the coming months!
What better way to spend July than in front of the comfort of a computer screen? It might not be summer everywhere in the world, but the Steam Summer Sale is in full swing, and Songs of Conquest is right there with it!
Never have our loving homage of a game been cheaper! A shining 50% to celebrate all things Summer and our upcoming vacation! So tell a friend, buy it for your grandmother, or just pick some flowers and enjoy July!
Regardless if you buy it or not, we wish you the very best! We'll be back in August, rested and with more news and more updates for you!
Glasses AND a flower necklace, thats the summer style!
Keep up the adventures!
/Everyone at Lavapotion
Changelog v0.86.2
Misc fixes to reduce online disconnects
Fix issue with AI wielders not always choosing skills correctly
Fix issue with custom mods not being loaded into the game properly
Update 0.86
Greetings Wielders!
We are thrilled to present the latest update, the last update before the Lavapotion devs go on our Swedish summer holidays! This update has some exciting new features, crucial bug fixes, and gameplay elevating improvements! We will be hard to reach next month so don’t expect answers as quickly as you are used to until we get back in force in August!
Thats us during the summer, peak Swedish!
We're happy to announce a new way to enhance your gaming experience, making it harder or easier, whatever your preference is. This update features a system that allows you to fine-tune the game difficulty to your liking. Say goodbye to hardcoded AI settings because now you have the power to balance the game according to your preferences.
So what does that mean? Well, we have added options to calibrate your unit multiplier, applied per town/settlement to that town’s per-turn troop production. This makes it possible for you to choose if you want an easier game or give yourself a real challenge. You will also have the option to start with a marketplace, changing all prizes for you and giving you the option to trade from the very start.
Look at me! I'm a human and now I can also have my own invisible bonus marketplace! Take that AI!
Another new feature is that you can change your xp multipliers, making your Wielders into either slow learners or the quickest-leveling Wielders in Aerbor
You can also alter your income, changing how much gold you get from all your settlements, mines and Wielder bonuses. Imagine the difference between a standard game and one where you earn a fraction of what you usually do!
It’s going to be hard to field an army with that income, but we believe in you!
We have worked hard on tracking down bugs these last weeks, everything from AI pathing to fixing that troops aren’t “hidden” in the garrison when we evaluate threat levels. But most of all we have worked on network bugs, things that threw you out of online games and didn’t allow you to get back in there. The work of bug-catching is ever-going and this won’t be the last we see of this issue but we believe that we made it a lot better last update. As always we appreciate your bug reports as they help us track down the issue!
The only good bug is a dead bug!
If you really want to delve deeper into everything we did we really recommend reading the changelog, it’s filled with lovely details about what we have been working on.
With that, we wish you the best of summer or winter, depending on where you are! We’ll be back in August but we’ll be checking up on our socials and our Steam page sporadically, we just can’t stay away.
Keep adventuring and don’t forget your sunscreen! Or just stay indoors and play video games, that’s the best protection there is!
Fixed "missing DLL" exception on startup, preventing application from launching
Update 0.85.8
Fixed game not starting on Macs running M1 or M2 processors
Removed the ability to use allies' rally points to buy troops from; the feature was causing exceptions in multiplayer games and there is unfortunately no quick fix
Make AI treat Waterfalls the same way as other movement buff entities (nice to use, but only on the way to something else)
Added sound effects to gate in battle
Fixed being able to use the rally point to buy troops from towns that are being razed or converted
Fixed "division by zero" exception when getting disconnected
Update 0.85
Greetings Wielders!
Have you recovered from our Loth update? Are your arms tired from opening tombs and digging up graves? Too bad because we have another massive update for you! It’s time for something that many of you have been asking about New traits and abilities for troops and all the balancing that goes with it!
Loth takes door-to-door recruitment to another level in our new update!
Adding new abilities to a game like ours changes things, the role of that stocky bullfrog changes when that Rana Guardian can now bullrush across the battlefield after all!
But unit abilities aren’t the only thing on our Swedish smorgasbord! We have been working with siege combat and we are proud to introduce gates and defensive bonuses to help you really hold those precious walls protecting your valuable settlements.
But a few general sentences aren’t going to explain massive things like this so let’s get into some details.
Look at that bullfrog bullrush, bullying the opposition
The frogs aren’t the only ones that have learned new tricks! Queen’s Quard now has the passive trait Essence fighter, making them hoard essence every time they attack. The scarred Brutes of Barya have mastered the new ability Front Line Fighter, giving them a sturdy buff for every hostile close to them.
Overall close to twenty of our troops have new or updated traits and abilities, far too many to list here, but further down there is a handy link to the patchnotes with everything you need to know about this new update.
The Banes of Loth are now mobile, making them the perfect “run and gun” unit!
As we have changed and balanced many of our units, we’ve also gone over our long roster of buildings and changed quite a few costs, increasing some and decreasing others. This work is just like so many others, ongoing. As we introduce new aspects to our game we will always look back and perhaps tweak a thing or two.
We’ve had our best math geniuses assigned to this project!
Balancing is far from “only” unit cost and new abilities, we’ve also done quite a bit of work with our troops overall, lowering and raising health, damage, and initiatives on over twenty-five of our hard-working troops!
Naming just a few of these changes are that the Necromancers obviously have been feeling their age as their health has been lowered to 50 from 60 but their damage has been increased, marking their obvious experience. Dragons have gotten a bit lower initiative and health but they have gained a powerful new ability called Menacing Roar, which lowers both movement and initiative of enemies that are brave or foolish enough to stand close to these powerful units.
I wouldn’t want to face a dragon armed with nothing but a good singing voice and dagger.
We can think of a few days better to rediscover Songs of Conquest. With a new campaign and all these changes to our units, things are radically different since just a couple of months ago. So try out those new abilities, siege those walls, and challenge your friends to deadly conquest.
We have one more sprint before our summer holidays and as always we look forward to the road ahead! There is a lot of interesting news coming after our sun-gazing and flower-picking break.
Fixed issue with missing lantern on second Loth campaign map on easy difficulty
Fixed issues with AI not spawning or being passive on third Arleon campaign map
Fixed recruitment issue that could lock adventure AI in endless loop
The graveyard shift starts now
Yes, the time has finally come! Today we are releasing the highly awaited campaign for the Barony of Loth, and this one will surely rattle your bones.
Carrying gunpowder to the battlefield comes with both benefits and hazards, as this poor Musketeer just found out. Either that or someone just dropped a well placed Fireball.
The campaign features four missions available on Easy, Normal and Hard difficulty, offering a real challenge similar to the previous campaigns of the Arleon and Rana factions. You will gain insight into the history of the Barony of Loth, as well as the tragic fate that befell the Aurelian empire. The campaign begins with the tale of Baron Aldus of Loth, who encounters a mysterious scholar that offers him a chance to seize an ancient power. Desperate to save his declining Barony, Aldus strikes a deal with the stranger, only to find out that there is a grave price to be paid. Yet, there might be a sliver of light at the end of the tunnel.
Who’s that lurking in the shadows? Someone is prying on the Baron as he offers prayer and sacrifice to Aurelia Eternal. Quite rude if you ask me.
We’re very excited for you all to experience the Barony of Loth campaign starting today. We’ve been dead set on perfecting this story and expanding on the game’s intricate lore to give you all a chance to explore yet another aspect of Aerbor, the world of Songs of Conquest. As always, the cinematic cutscenes are delivered in the form of a song, which is written and performed by our game designer Carl.
He sings, he designs and he even starred in a horror movie. Is there anything this man can’t do? (Drop a comment below if you know what movie it was, for serious trivia bonus points!)
The whole team is immensely proud of what we have achieved so far and the Loth campaign is not the end of it. You can look forward to more unit abilities and siege battle improvements, as well as AI becoming smarter and a better adversary. We also have a few surprises up our sleeves, but that is for later, today we celebrate the return of the dead and wish you all a good play session!
Can the Faey be trusted? Maybe, maybe not. In our experience they lie quite a loth.
Leave a comment below and let us know if you are excited to try out the new campaign! Or just drop a message to the team. Your ideas, feedback and encouragement are greatly appreciated!
The first quarter of the year is behind us, this means we have the chance to look at what we’ve done so far during 2023. Even though Q1 only has six specific items listed we’ve done much more than that, both big and small changes that have made Songs of Conquest a different game compared to what it was before.
It looks like a great year, doesn’t it?
Beacon Improvements So how did we actually improve beacons? Quite a few things actually! We enhanced their role as a victory condition and turned them into teleports, which in turn made us rework the way teleports work. You can now choose which beacon you teleport to if you own several of them, creating some very useful and tactical networks, especially for those bigger maps.
Imagine taking over an enemy's home beacon, leaving them stranded in hostile territory!
Artifact Marketplace We added something called the Raider’s market. It's building on the adventure map where you can trade those hard-fought-for artifacts or just buy that item that you were missing. This mysterious trader has now appeared on a few of our maps and is ready to lighten that coin purse!
The difference between winning and losing could be that new golden mask!
Map editor finalized This one is brand new as it came out with out last update. But are we completely done? No and yes. There might still be tweaks and small fixes left to do but our map editor is now in a state that we are proud over, ready for our 1.0 launch.
We put a lot of effort into making the map editor more user-friendly and updated a few features. Search functionality was added, as well as drop-down menus to make it easier to find those entities that you were looking for. We also added a feature that gives you the option to crop maps after creation. And an overall a better UI and user experience. (We hope!) Let us know if you agree or disagree!
The map editor has been vastly improved in Q1. Did you know that Songs of Conquest is one of the most active games on mod.io in terms of most downloaded maps? Almost half a million user created maps have been downloaded so far!
For those of you that enjoy creating more story-driven maps we updated the way you add a chain of objective groups. We also added a bunch of more portraits for custom dialogues. We can't wait to see what type of stories and scenarios you guys will create with these new tools!
A face for every occasion!
Update troops on recruitment screen Sometimes it's all about the quality of life improvements. You can now upgrade troops directly in the "wielder interaction header" if the building has a troop pool with the upgraded troop type.
It’s the little things in life that make it better. Like seeing your enemies driven before you or a new UI update.
Rana random events We absolutely delivered on this one! Rana now has exactly 100 random events, a nice and round number. Some are more random than others and some require certain conditions to occur before getting them. These are singular or sometimes a series of events that can act as both a boon or a drawback during your games. Tell us in the comments is you have any events that always happen to you? Might they be a clue to how you play the game?
This would be one of those boons we mentioned.
More skirmish maps Since the start of Q1 we have added four new skirmish maps. Triad pass, Proving ground, Divided and From rags to riches. These are four beautiful and lovingly-crafted maps but more are on the way, including our largest map yet!
This map is going to be huge!
AI Improvements Improving our AI is an ongoing work and doesn't have a public list of bullet points in the roadmap, but we still wanted to highlight the work done. Through feedback from our community (keep leaving us comment on Steam, on our Discord, Reddit, etc, it helps us make the game better!) and through internal discussions and testing, we try to improve the AI with just about every update. For example, we recently released a vast improvement for our battle AI. It now has better tactical awareness and makes better use of spells like repel or swap!
Now the AI pulls that trick on you!
As the AI now plans battles differently, it tries to protect its ranged troops and use its melee troops wiser than before. It also views the unit roles differently, changing tactics if it's defending or attacking or if it's behind obstacles or not. It’s a whole new tactical ball game and it has made quite a difference.
The AI has also learned to path its course across the adventure map better, clearing out pockets of resources with more efficency (but again, let us know if you spot problems!). It uses several Wielders to act as mules, sending reinforcements to the front and making longer trips than before.
The quartely results: Check marks all around. Yes, we are happy about it.
We hope that you are pleased with everything we have done so far and that you, like us, look forward to what’s coming next. If you want to go into the gritty details for updates the last months, we recommend reading up on our changelogs. If you do, would you please leave a comment about your one favorite update, of all the ones done in Q1? Or just let us know what upcoming feature you are most excited about.
